Justin Trudeau has proven to be just as inept and corrupt as his father was, and here's why you should help vote out Mr. Trudeau on October 21st
Most logical, reasonable people (admittedly they're few and far between nowadays) know that politicians as a whole are self-centred, slimy, and corrupt to some degree. However, as with most things, there are levels to corruption - when evidence comes forth proving real, deep rooted corruption (particularly when it involves a politician or group meddling with the judicial branch on behalf of a corporation or donor), it's important to keep politicians in check by ousting them when that corruption is brought to light. Doing so helps curb the level of corruption and serves as a deterrence for future candidates, but as time goes by, the level of corruption unchecked by the populace has increased.
A caveat to that of course is that the evidence must be compelling and not just accusations with no real proof (like those running rampant in the US with the Trump-Russia hoax and the new Trump-Ukraine accusations that are even further removed from reality than their failed Russia probe).
While many seem to think Canadian politics is "cleaner" than down south, this is simply not true - corruption is just as rampant in Canadian politics (though perhaps to a less damaging degree) as it is in the US, it just seems to be ignored by the public and even our media. The Canadian public ironically seems to take a lot more interest in American politics than it does our own, which to some degree is fair given that it's much more interesting, but obviously bear fewer consequences on our own lives.
The Canadian media which was more than willing to help Trudeau get into power, was surprisingly open to covering the SNC-Lavalin scandal involving Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party. This led to a sizeable drop in Trudeau's favourability and approval ratings, yet in the weeks and months that followed even as more damning evidence came out against him, his polling numbers rose back up, showing once again how forgetful or indifferent the public is when it comes to politics, thanks partly to the rapid news cycle and decreased attention spans of modern society.
For those who don't know, SNC-Lavalin is a major Canadian construction and energy company based in Montreal with a long history of murky business dealings in foreign countries and here at home, including being caught making illegal federal campaign donations (most of which were to the Liberal party) as recently as 2016 in a probe by Elections Canada. After multiple illegal business dealings and cases of bribery were brought to light in recent years, SNC-Lavalin was facing federal prosecution that could result in a 10-year ban from bidding on federal contracts, potentially costing the company billions.
In early 2019 it came to light after Minister of Justice and Attorney General Jody Wilson-Reybould had been "shuffled to a different cabinet position" (ie. demoted) that pressure had been put on the former Attorney General to accept a Deferred Prosecution Agreement (essentially a deal with a corporation to avoid criminal charges if certain conditions are met, such as restitution, improving their conduct, etc.) - which ironically was a new tool introduced in 2018 by Parliament under Liberal control (note that timing too, given SNC-Lavalin was in the midst of these charges before the bill was even introduced). According to Wilson-Reybould, Trudeau and several high-ranking officials under his direction had been pressuring her to accept the DPA, citing that it would save Canadian jobs.
Following multiple hearings in the House regarding the scandal, Wernick announced his early retirement from his position and Wilson-Reybould (along with fellow Liberal Cabinet Minister Jane Philpott, who had openly opposed Trudeau's handling of the case) were ousted from the Liberal Caucus by Trudeau himself.
At the end of a 6 month investigation, Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion issued a scathing report of Trudeau's conduct, finding that Trudeau had violated the federal Conflict of Interest act by directly and indirectly attempting to influence the acting Attorney General in an ongoing criminal case. The most bothersome aspect of the case is that there are no sanctions specified for the violation, essentially meaning that even if Trudeau was in violation, there isn't anything they can do.
Even more grossly, the RCMP was asked to investigate whether Trudeau's actions constituted obstruction of justice, which does carry criminal sanctions, only for Ottawa to block the RCMP's probe and shut down any criminal case against him, valid or not.
After months of vehemently stating the allegations were completely false, then that he wanted to protect Canadian jobs and he never felt he was applying any pressure to Wilson-Reybould, Trudeau responded to Dion's report by claiming that he "accepted responsibility" but that he denied doing anything wrong and further defended his actions, showing his apparent lack of understanding of what accepting responsibility means.
The whole affair was the biggest (but far from the only) black mark on Trudeau's term as Prime Minister, and highlighted how easily a party with majority can get away with corruption simply by pretending it didn't happen even when proven otherwise - without the majority of the House of Commons, the Prime Minister can essentially do what he wants and remain in power.
The SNC-Lavalin affair is the biggest example of corruption in Canadian politics in recent memory, but it's far from an isolated problem - the federal and provincial governments over the years have been plagued by it for decades. Major corporations have procured special treatment from the government for as long as they've been around, and it's particularly prominent in Quebec and Ontario; every party has had its share of corruption, but several leaders have been deeply embroiled in it, like Jean Chretien and Pierre Trudeau.
The SNC-Lavalin affair wasn't the first blatant ethics violation Trudeau had incurred - a "family" trip in 2017 was Trudeau's first official violation according to the Ethics Commissioner, where Trudeau to a vacation to Aga Khan's private island in the Bahamas. The Aga Khan is the leader of the Ismaili Muslims and chairman of the board for the Global Centre of Pluralism, an institution in Ottawa which has been given grants by the federal government before, including a $15 million grant in 2015. Pierre Trudeau was also a friend of the Aga Khan hence Justin's free stay on his island and use of a private helicopter, which constitutes a gift that can reasonably be seen to influence him and his decisions as Prime Minister.
Now that we've established some of Trudeau's shady business dealings, how about we take some time to look at his policies?
Let's start with his economic prowess - and by prowess, I mean ineptitude. While the Liberals haven't raised income taxes, they have instituted a carbon tax which has contributed to our ridiculously high gasoline prices - I'll have another rant about the climate hoax in the future - which has, just like most Liberal ideas, left the public footing the bill for nothing to get accomplished. Despite the carbon tax taking effect last year, emissions in Canada have increased, and have actually increased year-over-year since Trudeau came into power - Justin has labelled himself a crusader for the climate, so how does he explain that one? He, like other world leaders, derided Trump for withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord, yet the United States has steadily decreased their emissions since Trump took office, while France, the UK, Canada, and most other left-led nations have continued to increase emissions every year...but Trump is the one ruining the environment according to them.
As we've seen throughout history, governments are notorious for wasteful spending - whether it be on projects the public doesn't want or need, overspending on even the most basic tasks, excess salaries and benefits for politicians, or extreme mismanagement and "accounting errors", much of taxpayer's money is wasted regardless of what country you live in. With Trudeau, he continues to spend more and more, racking up massive deficits that will come back to bite Canadians in the future, with next to nothing to show for it.
There's also Trudeau's incessant virtue signalling, continuing to funnel in thousands of migrants into Canada each year to ensure future Liberal votes in a political ploy as old as politics itself. One of his first actions as Prime Minister was to take in 25,000 Syrian refugees (and more in subsequent years) with government funding rather than private sponsors - private sponsors historically being much more successful in vetting those refugees and making sure they are successful in their new home. A study in BC showed that after more than a year in Canada living off of taxpayer dollars, 79% of Trudeau's refugees were still unemployed, increasing the strain on our welfare system and increasing the burden on Canadian taxpayers.
That's not to mention the Liberal party bypassing critical security checks and integration programs to achieve Trudeau's PR stunt which overwhelmed refugee resettlement agencies and caused massive problems in communities taking in these refugees, in parallel cases to rising issues found in failing European nations like the UK, France, and Germany. Schools faced some of the stiffest tests thanks to Trudeau's scheme, forced to try to integrate children raised in a completely different culture that treats women as inferior not to mention the direct conflict with Christian and other faiths that feature in Canada. Most inexplicably the government decided to skip the standard integration measures for refugees in order to meet Trudeau's self-imposed deadline, meaning the refugees weren't even properly introduced to Canada's values and laws and had a valid excuse for not knowing it was illegal to beat their wives with a hockey stick for half an hour, as was the case for a Syrian man arrested for domestic assault (which would have been perfectly acceptable in his home country).
The Prime Minister defended his actions and in 2016 ensured Canadian's safety, stating that "I will be personally responsible for harm brought to any Canadian citizens" as a result of his refugee program. Yet Trudeau was conspicuously quiet when outrage swelled as 13-year-old Marissa Shen was brutally murdered in 2017 and a 28-year-old Syrian man was arrested and charged for her murder in 2018 that was one of Trudeau's refugees, one of the most high profile cases of Trudeau's failed program.
Now, not everything Trudeau has done is bad - the legalization of marijuana is one part of his platform that I agreed with, as do most Canadians. Stephen Harper was far from perfect but was a great Prime Minister during his tenure, a stable and steady leader whose foresight helped Canada avoid the same lows that the US suffered in the 2007-08 economic collapse. One issue that he (and the Conservative party) were completely out of touch with was their stance on marijuana - while personally I have never used marijuana or any drug for that matter, the fact that it was banned in the first place was misguided at best and devoid of logical reasoning, especially considering alcohol, which presents real complications and danger to not only users but those around them when taken irresponsibly, is legal. Marijuana doesn't cause overdoses or put people in the hospital, it doesn't increase violent tendencies, and has proven medicinal benefits (particularly with CBD products, which were banned despite not giving users any "high" that was viewed as wrong).
Harper's stance on marijuana undoubtedly led at least in part to his loss to Trudeau in 2015, and was one of the few parts of Trudeau's platform that was correct. Yet even this, Trudeau and the Liberal Party completely failed on.
Despite plenty of successful examples and processes to copy from states in the US which have legalized marijuana in recent years, the Liberals were painfully slow in their implementation, with cannabis not being legalized officially until October of 2018. Even a year later, their horrendous rollout of legal marijuana has failed on all fronts - massive shortages due to the government's incredibly limited approval of production licenses and very few places having access to the legal product given those shortages. Its led to a much lower tax intake off the product than what was projected and what should have been, especially when compared to the likes of Colorado and Washington which implemented very successful programs in a vastly shorter period of time than Canada did. This has left many consumers still relying on the black market to get the drug with the government missing out on that potential tax revenue, and just highlights the sheer incompetence that plagues our government even when profit is to be had.
All of this and we haven't even gotten to how embarassingly hypocritical and fake our current Prime Minister is. A self-proclaimed (and media endorsed) leader of the modern political correctness movement, Trudeau has hammered opponents and international leaders in the past over perceived social injustice, only to have it revealed that he had adorned "brownface" and "blackface" during his tenure as a private high school teacher. While many were keen to dismiss the photos and videos as a product of immaturity and young stupidity, while Trudeau was in a high school at the time, he was a teacher at the high school, not a student - he was in his late twenties when the now infamous footage was taken, where the excuse of being an immature child no longer flies.
Speaking of his time as a high school teacher, Trudeau left his position as a teacher at West Point Grey Academy in 2001 under some very shady circumstances. Rather than leaving the job in the summer as in most cases not related to wrongdoing, Trudeau left his teaching gig mid-semester and the reasons for this have changed many times over the years. The academy itself had issued a statement regarding his leave that Trudeau had left to give speeches, which Justin refuted through a lawfirm and stated he had accepted a job at a public school (why was a lawyer needed back in 2001 for this?). Years later, Trudeau stated he left the academy over a disagreement on an article Trudeau convinced a student to write about how girls at the academy were never reprimanded for their violations of dress code, which the school deemed to be disrespectful. Trudeau later stated that he left because he was "moving on with his life", while the headmaster of the school at the time stated Trudeau had told him he was leaving to focus on becoming an engineer.
More recently, rumours have circulated that Trudeau left after an affair with a 17-year old student, which would be illegal (the age of consent is 16 in Canada, however for those in positions of authority, specifically including teachers, the age is 18 for obvious reasons). Rumours persisted that the girl had been found and contacted by the Globe and Mail, but had signed an NDA after being paid an undisclosed sum by Trudeau's family - the one caveat here being that if she was 17 at the time, an NDA would be inadmissable given that they can't cover criminal activity. The rumour is lent more credibility by multiple sexual harrassment claims over the years against Trudeau, further damaging his media concocted image of being the clean progressive saviour of politics.
Moving on from speculation, his blackface photos just add to his history of embarassing moments, from his hilarious fumbling when asked a question about how he himself was cutting back on plastics and responded by claiming to replace plastic bottles with water boxes, to his replacement of "mankind" with "peoplekind" as to not offend people, and his insulting habit of dressing up and dancing in other culture's garbs to "celebrate" their culture (which have offended many in those communities).
As a proud ambassador for the "LGBTQ+" (they may have added some letters since I last heard, excuse my ignorance if so) and for social justice, he's also been rightfully blasted for his public support of brutal dictator Fidel Castro, who he praised in eulogy following Castro's death in 2016. Despite Castro oppressing Cuba for decades, murdering countless dissidents and rulebreakers (including many gay people by the way), Trudeau saw fit to heap praise on the communist hero. Funnily enough this saw more credence lent to the theory that Justin was actually Fidel Castro's son, given his mother Margaret Trudeau's high-profile promiscuity and the Trudeau's regular trips to Cuba, to coincide with Justin's surprising resemblance to Castro. Frankly, if he truly was Fidel's son that would be about the only acceptable excuse for someone to openly praise such an evil dictator.
The Solution
The mess that is Canadian politics is unlikely to change anytime soon, and public opinion will likely continue to view it as being somewhat clean and civil compared to our southern allies - with Trump's exposure of American politics and the media opening many people's eyes to the vast problems in the system and incredible incompetence so many politicians sport, you'd think that may translate to more awareness here, but it doesn't seem to be the case.
Unfortunately, unlike the States we don't have any strong leaders from any of the major parties running for election. This is showed prominently from polls - despite one-sided media coverage and constantly disproven allegations against him alongside historically left-leaning polls, Donald Trump has sported a higher approval rating than Trudeau for quite some time, yet many polls still show Trudeau being the preferred candidate heading into this election.
With three major parties in the national sense, we have a race between the Liberals, Conservatives, and the NDP. To break things down simply, the Conservatives are right-wing but not by much (they're essentially center-right) and as a party have proven to be better with fiscal policy than the alternatives; the Liberals and Trudeau I've already thoroughly dissected are are left-wing, and the NDP is farther left with even more irresponsible and silly fiscal policies.
While Harper was a strong leader for the Conservatives, new candidate Andrew Scheer doesn't inspire a ton of confidence - he's vague on a lot of views, doesn't offer much charisma and offers the air of a typical slimy politician. Another career politician with limited outside experience, Scheer has already been caught embellishing his role as an insurance broker prior to becoming a politician, and for trying to hide his dual citizenship with the US. Luckily, even though the Conservative platform continues to slide to the centre, Scheer promises tax cuts and to remove the ridiculous carbon tax on day one, a major win for the middle class. Why the Conservative party chose Scheer as their frontrunner when a much more viable candidate in Maxime Bernier was available I'll never know (more on him shortly).
The Conservatives are the main opposition for the Liberals like usual, with the NDP following up to secure the third major party position. The NDP, like usual, makes even the worst Liberal policies look great in comparison. Supporting major tax increases particularly on corporations, larger government and spending that would make even Trudeau blush, the NDP has always been a socialist party. Led this time by Jagmeet Singh, a former defense attorney, their platform is relatively unchanged from previous elections, but instead of being open about their socialist policies, the NDP has copied some of their southern Democrat counterparts and hidden their economic agenda in the guise of climate protection. Instead of admitting their agenda to socialize more and more of Canada's infrastructure and grow the already bloated government, they have championed the current climate hysteria as a means to accomplish those goals.
Planning to implement more large government projects (because those always turn out so well), massively increase spending, further tax corporations and businesses (which simply leads to those corporations leaving the country for more open markets, like we've seen countless times before), and take more money out of Canadian's pockets. The NDP has luckily never gotten into power at a federal level, but the massive damage caused by provincial NDP governments that have gotten into power before should be enough to prove their harmful platform. If the NDP ever gets into a leadership position at a federal level, you can look forward to a crashing economy, but hey we'll reduce our carbon footprint and save the world!
The two next biggest parties in the riding include the Green Party, which is another leftist party even more focused on the environment and is taken seriously by virtually nobody, and the brand new People's Party.
The People's Party was founded just last year by the afforementioned Maxime Bernier, citing disagreement with Andrew Scheer's direction. The most intelligent and capable leader of the bunch with the most outside experience given his earlier career experience including being a lawyer, a National Bank branch manager, and a financial advisor. After removing the shackles of the meager Conservative party platform, Bernier and his party propose complete tax reform including substancial tax cuts, a smaller and less powerful government, and an end to the ceaseless climate fearmongering fuelling disastrous political platforms of late. Proving himself much sharper than the other candidates during debates and sporting financial acumen the other leaders couldn't dream of, Bernier is far and away the best candidate on offer and arguably represents the only true conservative, right-wing party in Canada.
The problem is, thanks to the media immediately labelling the party "far-right" and even "racist", and paired with its incredibly low media coverage, few people know anything about the party and it has virtually no chance of getting in in their first federal riding. Taking a stand against the problematic immigration practices that Canada has embraced like Europe, Bernier vows to cut immigration numbers and make more stringent rules to protect Canadians and their tax dollars. This was immediately met with calls of racism and claims that the party is "far-right" by opponents and the mainstream media, as is typical in today's political climate (just look at how the US or European media does the same thing).
At the eleventh hour, the Conservative party has come under fire for allegedly hiring a former Liberal advisor that was tasked with promoting Bernier as a racist and "far right" leader. The media has blasted Conservatives for this, including claims that it's sullying Canadian politics. Now, I don't like what the Conservatives did here, and it's a typically sleazy political move, but if you hadn't noticed, there isn't a political group in the world that doesn't employ similar tactics. Smearing opposition is a political art in itself, and has been employed by Canadian politicians and parties since the country was founded - claiming it is anything out of the norm or somehow "sullying" our politics is hilariously out of touch with reality. Consider this - they allegedly hired a Liberal advisor to accomplish their smear tactics - what do you think he was doing for the Liberals when he was their advisor?
And, who's really to blame here - the Conservatives for trying to get a leg up on their opposition, as is to be expected by politicians, or the media for smearing the party on their own? They're the ones supposedly unbiased, so why were they labelling Bernier as "far right" from the get-go?
Unfortunately, the People's Party, at least in this election, is unknown to the majority of Canadians and many that have heard of them, have only heard of them being labelled as "racist" or far-right, even if they can't give a single example as to why that is.
So, that leaves us with two realistic candidates for Prime Minister: another term of Trudeau, or a return to the Conservatives, who despite a weak leader will still return the country to more fiscally responsible practices, if nothing else.
The choice should be clear for most logical people, whether it's a vote for the Conservatives or to support the new People's Party, but if you need a bit more convincing, consider this tweet from Barack Obama -
Now you may think, wait, I thought you didn't like Trudeau? Precisely.
Obama has endorsed two international leaders leading up to their country's national elections in recent memory - Angela Merkel of Germany and Emmanuel Macron of France. If you don't know much about them it's easy to miss the point I'm making, but to put it simply - both of those leaders have utterly failed their country.
Both of the afforementioned leaders have opened up their borders to massive waves of "refugees" and migrants from Muslim nations, leading to soaring violent crime rates, sexual violence against women, increased poverty, increased hate crimes against Jewish and Christian people and communities, and more. In fact it's gotten so bad in Germany that the government quite literally has been posting offers to pay migrants to leave the country and relocate somewhere else, many cities in the country have banned German flags as it may "offend" immigrants, and the government released an official statement advising Jewish people to hide their religious affiliation when in public to avoid hate crimes against them. No seriously. And no it's not because there are Nazis present, that's just what happens when you invite a good amount of Islam into your country.
France isn't in much better circumstances with their progressive saviour quickly having his media-created progressive hero persona tanked amidst soaring crime rates in "refugee" areas and massive imported problems with poverty and cleanliness - areas in Paris are even taking to installing public urinals in open areas to try and limit the amount of migrants relieving themselves in the middle of their streets.
So if Obama's endorsement means anything, it means you should keep well clear of anyone he says does or will do a good job. After all, he promised to do a good job himself.